I’ve enjoyed practically all the movies that were based on novels by Nicholas Sparks, but I didn’t know until yesterday that he is Catholic and that his faith is very important to him. I guess that explains in part why he is so fascinated by human love. Love is what makes the world go round. And Christ shows us by his life that God is love. That includes love for other people.

Here’s the article I found yesterday on Catholic News Service:

Author Sparks puts Catholic values into practice both on, off the page

April 9, 2012

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Nicholas Sparks, the popular Catholic romance novelist, puts his faith into practice in several different ways. One way is through philanthropy. Sparks has not only volunteered as a track coach for New Bern High School near his home on the North Carolina coast — as a college freshman he was part of the University of Notre Dame’s 800-meter relay team that set a school record — but he also paid for a new track at the high school, and provided for tutoring for disadvantaged students. Sparks and his wife, Catherine, also co-founded a “multidenominational” Christian school in New Bern called the Epiphany School. Nicholas Sparks is chairman of the board of trustees for the school, which educates students from fifth through 12th grades. Sparks spoke in an April 4 telephone interview with Catholic News Service to promote “The Lucky One,” a new movie based on one of his novels that opens April 20. The story tells of a Marine veteran who sets out to find a woman pictured in a photograph he found in the rubble while serving in Iraq, believing her image and her “Keep safe” message on the back side of the photo helped him cheat death several times. “Our passion lies in two areas,” Sparks said of himself and his wife, both of whom grew up as children in military families. “One is education and one is veterans. There are so many wonderful programs for veterans, but where we want to make a difference is with prosthetic limbs. The Veterans Administration will provide them, but sometimes they don’t work, they’re not exact, they can’t go over a certain cost. … I don’t know, it just bothers me to think they’re wearing something that doesn’t work as well as it could.”

Father Ernest Daly was ordained a priest by Pope John Paul II in 1991. He has an MA in Philosophy from the Gregorian University in Rome, and an MA in Theology from the Regina Apostolorum in Rome. Fr. Ernest has spent the last 30 years of his life working in schools and with young people, and has been publishing Our Faith In Action® since its founding in 2003. He loves skiing, movies, and hanging out with his nieces and nephews (he has a ton!).